The girl’s terror was captured by a squad car video camera, recording while officers who responded to her 911 call talked outside the car. Meanwhile, the squad radio blared the Steve Miller Band’s “Take the Money and Run.”

The teenager was a victim of sex trafficking, prosecutors alleged.

A Ramsey County jury is deliberating charges against two men, Fonati McArthur Diggs of Northfield, Minn., and Timothy Denzel Cross of St. Paul, accused of putting the underage girl and her 18-year-old friend on the street to perform sex acts for money in June 2012. The jury’s deliberations are scheduled to continue Thursday.

Attorneys for Diggs and Cross argued Wednesday that there is too little evidence to convict the men, and that much of it was inconsistent.

Diggs, 24, faces two charges of aiding and abetting sex trafficking, one for each of the alleged victims. Cross, 20, was charged with those two counts, as well as possession of a firearm by an ineligible person, assault with a gun of the 18-year-old woman, and assault with a knife of the 16-year-old girl.

The real culprit — and not charged in the case — is a woman who testified for the state, said defense attorney Murad Mohammad, who represents Diggs.

Shanese Garner admitted she posted a Backpage.com ad for the 18-year-old so the teenager could make enough money to buy a bus ticket back home to Duluth, Minn., she testified.

“That was the only way that I knew she could … make some money,” Garner said.

Garner, who lived at Lawson and Payne avenues in St. Paul, had seen the 18-year-old “walking the street” on Payne. Garner knew that Payne was not a good place to make money through prostitution.

“Police cars are out there like stop signs,” she said.

She let the woman stay at her house, giving her food and cigarettes, because “I am a nice person,” Garner said.

Garner admitted under cross-examination that she works as “an escort” from time to time. She’s also a dancer, she said.

Mohammad asked whether she had ever acted as a “pimp” for other women or girls. She said she had not.

The defense attorney repeatedly pressed Garner on her motivations regarding the Duluth woman, taunting her with questions like, “So you just did this out of the goodness of your heart?” and “You really care about (her), right?”

After one such question, she muttered under her breath, “Tool.”

Mohammad told the jury in his closing argument Tuesday that Garner had “a strong incentive to get up on the stand” for the state: “She was afraid of being prosecuted.”

“This is Shanese Garner pimping (the victim),” Mohammad said, holding up a copy of the online ad Garner posted that featured suggestive photos of the 18-year-old. “That is who pimped (her).”

The Pioneer Press generally does not identify purported victims of sexual abuse.

Prosecutors argued that Garner lived in “a different world” than jurors did.

“She was trying to be helpful in the way she knows how to do,” said prosecutor Jill Gerber. “She was not a pimp, and she was not in any secret, behind-the-scenes deal with the state.”

Christopher Anderson, attorney for Cross, argued Wednesday that the state didn’t prove Cross ever possessed a firearm. One was found in his apartment, but there’s no evidence it ever left a kitchen cabinet, Anderson said.

While the 18-year-old woman testified that Cross threatened her with the gun, her statements about the issue were inconsistent, Anderson said.

In a similar way, the 16-year-old girl’s statements that Cross threatened her with a knife changed over time, the defense attorney said.

The two teens were excited to come to St. Paul, Gerber said. The 18-year-old had been corresponding with Diggs online and had sent $2,000 in student-loan money to him in advance. She considered him her boyfriend.

The plan was for him to rent an apartment for them, she said. When she arrived, there was no apartment. Diggs had sex with her that night, she testified, and then invited his friends over to have sex with her, too.

Diggs knew the woman was vulnerable, Gerber argued. Her foster mother testified that she was kept in foster care beyond her 18th birthday for reasons related to that. In her testimony, Garner described her as “slow, mentally.”

The 16-year-old has low self-esteem and is developmentally delayed, Gerber said.

“What a perfect combination of characteristics for these two (defendants) to take advantage of,” Gerber said.

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